Guatemala InHert Estate Pacamara Pandora Fatima Flavor Characteristics, Origin Regions, and Brewing Guide

Pacamara Plant Characteristics

Pacamara plants are medium to tall in height with short internodal spacing. They have large, wavy, dark green leaves, with new leaves appearing in green or brown colors. The trunk is hard and sturdy, with thick, strong branches.

Compared to Typica, Pacamara has more lateral branches, similar to Pacas.

The cherries have a small protrusion at the floral disc position.

The coffee beans are large and oval-shaped, approximately 1.03 cm in length, 0.71 cm in width, and 0.37 cm in thickness.

Depending on altitude, Pacamara beans are about 70% the size of Maragogipe beans.

Overall, Pacamara beans are almost always above 17 screen size, with over 90% being 18 screen or larger.

Pacamara offers full, rich, and complex flavors. Few coffee varieties possess both fruit acidity and distinct sweetness, along with diverse notes of drupes, vanilla plants, tropical fruits, chocolate, and spicy sweetness.

Product Information

Manufacturer: Coffee Workshop
Shelf Life: 90 days
Net Weight: 100g
Packaging: Bulk
Organic: No
Bean State: Roasted
Sugar Content: Sugar-free
Origin: Guatemala
Roast Level: Medium roast

Coffee Details

Guatemala La Libertad, Huehuetenango El Injerto Pandora de Fatima

Country: Guatemala
Grade: SHB
Estate: El Injerto
Roast Level: Medium roast
Processing Method: Washed
Variety: Pacamara
Batch: Competition batch Pandora de Fatima EI07
Flavor: Chestnut, plum, chocolate

Brewing Method

Hand-pour brewing for El Injerto. Use 15g of coffee, medium grind (Fuji hand grinder with ghost tooth burrs, setting 4), V60 dripper, water temperature 88-89°C. First pour 30g of water for a 27-second bloom, then pour to 105g and stop. Wait until the water level drops to half, then slowly pour until reaching 225g. Avoid the tail end. Water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, extraction time 2:00.

Guatemala Pacamara Competition Batch Pandora de Fatima Pacamara PI07

World-Class Coffee Estate - El Injerto

There are over ten thousand coffee estates worldwide, ranging from those producing commercial coffee beans to high-quality estates and those growing rare varieties. Today, I'd like to introduce the renowned top-tier coffee estate from Guatemala - El Injerto.

Estate Introduction

El Injerto Estate is located in the famous Huehuetenango highlands of Guatemala. The Aguirre family has been growing coffee here since 1900. The estate's name "Injerto" comes from a local fruit name. El Injerto places special emphasis on ecological protection and organic cultivation techniques, implementing strict quality control to ensure the quality of green coffee beans. Through the Aguirre family's efforts, El Injerto Estate has earned Rainforest Alliance certification and has been a frequent champion in many international coffee competitions since 2002.

El Injerto Estate (also translated as Grafting Estate) is one of the top estates in Guatemala. If it claimed to be second, probably no one would dare to claim first! It has won many world-class competition awards, leading to its current standing. Last year, the estate owner raised the estate's status to new heights. Like Panama's famous La Esmeralda Estate, El Injerto holds global bidding competitions, and the competition beans it releases are exceptionally remarkable. Notably, the first batch of "Mocha variety" in 2012 set a world record, reaching an astonishing price of "$500.5/pound USD," making it a truly star-studded estate!

For this competition, El Injerto Estate specially launched the "BEST El Injerto" series, featuring carefully selected small batches and coffee varieties of exceptional quality from within the estate. Experienced farmers meticulously select ripe coffee cherries, which are then screened by cuppers to eliminate batches that don't meet quality standards. Under such strict selection criteria, Pacamara varieties from El Injerto Estate account for only about 8% of total production.

About the Pacamara Variety

Pacamara gained worldwide fame through the Cup of Excellence (COE) in 2004, frequently winning championships within 2-3 years. Pacamara from Guatemala's El Injerto Estate set a record price of $80.2 per pound for green beans in 2008.

As for the variety's origin and name: it is a derivative of the elephant bean Maragogype and Pacas, taking the first 4 letters of Maragogype and Pacas to form Pacamara. It is an excellent coffee variety developed in El Salvador, with very large beans similar to elephant beans, around 21-22 screen size. It has been an outstanding coffee variety in Central and South America for the past two years. Every country or farm hopes to find suitable regions for growing this variety to produce excellent coffee, much as Panama treats Geisha. The characteristics of Pacamara coffee include bright fruit acidity and exceptionally pure, delicate sweetness.

Although Pacamara's appearance is quite similar to its cousin, the elephant bean variety, since 2006 the COE has cupped Pacamara from 30 estates, with some flavors truly belonging to superstars - such as Honduras champion Santa Martha in 2006, El Salvador third-place Cerro Negro (Black Mountain Estate) in 2007, Guatemala's regular COE champion El Injerto, and El Salvador's second-place Pacamaral estate in 2008. These are all excellent representatives of Pacamara, but they are award-winning batches, which makes them very expensive.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

This El Injerto competition batch is a washed coffee, and the washed process is the traditional way of handling coffee fruit with water. It usually involves flotation, depulping, a soak-and-ferment stage to remove the mucilage, washing or further soaking, then drying and hulling. Because the beans stay in water for a long time, they undergo chemical changes that consume much of the simple sugar (fructose and glucose), lowering sweetness while increasing various organic acids. Washed coffees therefore tend to hold onto the bean's own aroma while offering bright fruit acidity and a clean, fresh character.

If you enjoy that clean washed profile, FrontStreet Coffee's Gedeb cooperative is worth trying: because smallholder yields in Yirgacheffe are pooled at cooperatives for processing and sale, the Gedeb cooperative brings skilled processing experience, and its especially refined, clean cup is what made it famous. The washed process lets it express jasmine florality and bright citrus acidity to the fullest, and after a light-to-medium roast it releases green tea and honey notes - good for pour-over, cold brew, espresso, and more.

For washed coffee's best-known showcase, look to FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya Little Tomato, since Kenya excels at double washing: the bean runs through the washing step twice - soaked for flotation, rinsed to remove residual mucilage, soaked again, then dried and hulled. The repeated rinsing and soaking render the juicy character to the extreme, and the cup shows cherry tomato, smoked plum, snow pear, black plum, and yellow sugar aromas, sweet-sour and juicy. And for a clean, low-acid washed cup close to a classic, FrontStreet Coffee's Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 keeps Blue Mountain's rich aroma with pure hazelnut, cream, chocolate, and caramel notes, balanced so that no single note dominates.